3 Takeaways™

The world map we grew up with makes Greenland and Africa look the same size. The problem?  Africa is actually an astonishing 14 times larger.

The even larger problem? There's no such thing as an accurate map. They all distort how we see the world. 

Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones are comedians, writers, and YouTubers with millions of followers where they are better known as Map Men. Their new book, This Way Up, explores how maps shape our understanding of the world and what happens when they inevitably get it wrong. 

They discuss:

• Why a 500-year-old deeply-flawed map became our standard picture of the world
• Why Greenland and other northern regions appear much larger than they really are
• Why creating a completely accurate flat map is impossible
• Why north being “up” is simply a convention
• How a country’s apparent size and position may shape how important we believe it is
• Why Google Maps can display different borders depending on where it is viewed
• What London taxi drivers reveal about navigation, memory, and the brain
• How relying on GPS is weakening abilities we once took for granted
• What GPS and AI have in common

Maps look objective, but they're actually very subjective and flawed. Where and how are they misleading us? 

And if you're looking for a more topical take on Greenland, Trump, and the recent security deal -- be sure to tune in next week for my conversation with security expert Heather Conley. 

What if one of the things Americans believe most deeply about America simply isn’t true?

Americans have a powerful story about who they are and why America acts when it does.

Historian Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says America's own history tells a very different story.

He discusses:

● The biggest myth Americans believe about their own country
● What American history looks like when you strip that myth away
● Why America keeps doing something it insists it doesn’t want to do
● Whether America’s wars were really forced upon it
● The unexpected connection between American power and the threats America faces
● What China and Russia may understand about America that Americans don’t
● What happens if America turns inward again

What if the biggest thing Americans misunderstand about their role in the world isn’t the world?

It’s America.

What if AI becomes easier to talk to than another person?

And what happens to us when it does?

MIT professor Sherry Turkle has spent decades studying what technology does to the way we think, work, and love. Now she says there are two parts of our lives we should never let AI into.

She discusses:

• Why ordinary conversation has started to feel like work
• The surprising reason people may prefer talking to chatbots
• How AI will change what we expect from other people
• Why “pretend empathy” may be more dangerous than it seems
• What happens when relationships become frictionless
• What it could mean for a child to have an AI friend
• Whether AI could make us worse at being with each other

The question isn’t just what AI can do. It’s what AI may do to us.

Mark Cuban told people that television would eventually be delivered over the internet. 

Everybody thought he was an idiot.

Now, Cuban is making another prediction that runs counter to what we all believe, but this time it's about A.I.

Few people have made as many big bets across as many industries as Mark Cuban. The billionaire entrepreneur and investor has built businesses in technology and media, transformed the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, and is now taking on prescription drug companies with Cost Plus Drugs.

He discusses:

● What everyone may be getting wrong about AI
● What he sees happening to jobs and where the real opportunity may be
● The one thing he believes AI will never replace
● How he decides whether a seemingly crazy idea is actually an opportunity
● The quality he looks for after seeing thousands of entrepreneurs
● The mistake incredibly smart people make again and again
● Why one of his biggest decisions required him to become “the younger Mark Cuban” again
● Why being wrong repeatedly may not matter nearly as much as we think
● What success means to him now that money is no longer the measure
● What he thinks most Americans still don’t understand about healthcare

Mark Cuban saw streaming coming and almost nobody believed him. What does he see now that the rest of us may be missing? 

What if the president can act before Congress has time to stop him?

As former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, former General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and a member of the National Security Council, Jeh Johnson has advised presidents on war, terrorism, cyber threats, and some of the country’s most consequential national security decisions.

He has seen what happens when the pressure to “do something” collides with incomplete intelligence, rapidly changing facts, political pressure, and enormous presidential power.

He discusses:

● Why “Mr. President, do something” can be dangerous advice
● Why Congress has formally declared war in only five conflicts in U.S. history
● How much military force a president can order without first going to Congress
● What happens to constitutional checks and balances when weapons can strike in minutes
● Why presidential power looks different from inside the Oval Office
● What actually happens inside the Situation Room when the intelligence is incomplete and the stakes are enormous
● The threat that worries him the most

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. But modern military strikes and warfare can move extraordinarily fast. 

So who can stop a president from starting a war? Where are the limits on presidential power when a decision has to be made in minutes? And when the law leaves enormous discretion in the hands of one person, how much ultimately depends on that person’s judgment and restraint?

What if trying harder is sometimes exactly the wrong thing to do?

Angela Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania psychologist, MacArthur Fellow, and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Grit, has spent years studying achievement. In her new book, Situated, she explores why perseverance alone isn't enough.

She discusses:

• How Angela and her husband nearly “gritted” their way out of their marriage
• How much your environment shapes who you become
• The small change that can make good habits easier
• Why parents may be asking the wrong question about their children
• How peer pressure can become a force for good
• Whether AI could make us worse at thinking
• When changing your situation matters more than changing yourself

We spend enormous energy trying to improve ourselves. Angela Duckworth asks a different question: what if the more important thing is to change what’s around us?

What can we do when doing the morally “right” thing produces worse outcomes?

And what if some of society’s strongest moral instincts are preventing us from solving problems we all agree are terrible?

Alvin Roth is a Stanford professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has helped redesign real-world systems, including kidney exchanges and the way doctors are matched with hospitals. His new book, Moral Economics, tackles a harder category of problems: markets and behaviors we find morally objectionable, even when banning them may create consequences we don’t want.

He discusses:

• Why nearly 100,000 Americans can be waiting for a kidney 
• What prohibitions of alcohol and heroin can teach us 
• What happened when Rhode Island accidentally legalized indoor prostitution
• Whether paying kidney donors could save lives without creating an ethically unacceptable market
• Why evidence becomes especially important when reasonable people disagree about morality
• Whether performance-enhancing drugs could eventually become as ordinary as coffee

Some policies sound obviously right when judged by their intentions. But what happens when you judge them by their actual consequences?

Roth pushes into the uncomfortable territory between those two questions: when banning something creates a black market, when changing a rule may save more lives than inventing a new technology, and what we should do when the outcome we believe is morally necessary turns out to be something we cannot actually achieve.

Could America build the world’s best AI and still lose the AI race?

What if the biggest threat to America’s lead isn’t China’s technology, but our own fear of using it?

Katrina Mulligan is Head of National Security Partnerships at OpenAI and previously served in senior roles at the Department of Defense, National Security Council, and Department of Justice. Few people have seen both Washington and frontier AI development from the inside.

She argues that AI is no longer a technology question for the future. It is becoming core infrastructure for economic strength, national security, and the way we work.

She discusses:

●  Why America could win the race to AGI but lose on adoption
●  Why trust in AI is dramatically higher in China and the developing world
●  How China and the U.S. are taking fundamentally different approaches to AI
●  Why AI may ultimately transform society as profoundly as electricity
●  The biggest mistake leaders make when trying to adopt AI
●  Why AI transformation cannot simply be delegated to the IT department
●  How she has used AI to become at least 30% more effective at her own job
●  Why using AI like a search engine means dramatically underestimating what it can do

America may currently have the advantage in building the most advanced AI.

Katrina explains in today's 3 Takeaways™ conversation why that lead is far from guaranteed, how fear could become a strategic disadvantage, and why the countries and organizations that learn to redesign themselves around AI may ultimately have the most to gain.

What if your brain isn’t showing you the world as it truly is?

Journalist, professor, and author of "A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness" Michael Pollan explores one of the deepest questions of all: why do we experience anything in the first place? 

He discusses:

• What consciousness actually is
• Why the brain predicts reality instead of simply taking it in
• How perception may be a kind of “controlled hallucination”
• Why we may see the world in the most useful way, not the most accurate way
• What animals, plants, and AI reveal about consciousness
• Why feelings may be central to being conscious
• Why attention may be one of our most precious resources
• How social media and AI are putting consciousness under siege
• Why consciousness is something we may need to protect and cultivate

The world you see may feel solid, obvious, and real.

But Michael Pollan explains why the experience of being conscious is far stranger, more fragile, and more mysterious than most of us realize.

Why would the world’s largest country risk everything to destroy a smaller neighbor?

What is it about Ukraine that poses a greater threat to Vladimir Putin than any army?

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and The Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum has spent decades studying Russia, Ukraine, and authoritarian regimes. She argues that the war is being fought over far more than territory and that the outcome will reshape democracy, military power, and global politics.

She discusses:

● What Putin was really trying to prevent when he invaded Ukraine
● Why nearly everyone underestimated the Ukrainian people
● How architects, engineers, and entrepreneurs began reinventing modern warfare
● What drones have revealed about the future of war
● The first warning sign that a democracy is beginning to fail
● How modern propaganda works without persuading anyone
● Why leaders often become dramatically richer as democracy weakens

The maps don’t tell the whole story of this war.

Anne Applebaum explains what’s actually at stake, why Putin hasn’t achieved what he expected, and what Ukraine may reveal about the hidden strengths of democracy.